Planning Commission Work Session   1/23/2024

Or if anyone comes to the meeting, they're more than welcome.

We'll give them some paper to provide those.

All right, then we will toss the ball to Israel, the way I like to do this.

Before I toss the ball, Mr. Priest, she's going to just give us a general overview of probably the review of the exhibition here that we did.

And then I'm just like to go around a little story, tradition, and what it's your turn, I speak.

Asking any questions you can in making the recommendations you'd like to make.

Again, we need to keep this moving, because we've got about an hour and 40 minutes to get through that.

All right.

I forgot to bring my copy.

Oh, is that it?

Yeah, thank you.

All right.

What we have before us is using is our procedures manual.

This is a document that we've created primarily because the zoning ordinance as adopted does not include within it the required submittals that come with any kind of application or timelines or anything like that, which was on purpose.

We move those things out of the ordinance so that we can more readily adjust and change those things administratively in the future.

But in moving the amount of the ordinance, we had to put them somewhere.

So that's the primary purpose of this document.

So it includes whether there's submission requirements, notice requirements, and then it has a section as well on community engagement.

It also is going to host a fee schedule for all our permit applications.

So some of the key things that are in there.

Hope Hope's paid attention to the concept of the development plan.

That is going to be kind of a workhorse for this, for our review processes going forward.

The development plan is the document where we're specifically going to be reviewing compliance with zoning.

So if you think of the final site plan as essentially a collection of plans

The final site plan basically incorporates within it a development plan where your zoning has been reviewed and consistency found in the zoning, a stormwater plan, same thing, consistency found with the stormwater, and a public improvements plan, which is basically your main requirement for street sidewalks utilities.

Each of those planning documents is approved, then they all come together into a final site plan document.

In part, what doing that, breaking those up in that way does is it allows us to try and get at the zoning compliance first while people, before people, for developers made significant investments in the engineering side of their development.

We can talk about zoning because one of the things you guys probably know very clearly in the zoning side is that there's a lot more opportunities for administrative waivers, modifications,

and then other forms of waivers and permits and stuff like that.

And there's a lot more opportunity to kind of talk about what's the best way of reaching compliance on one issue or another.

James, quick question.

Development plan.

Yes.

Did you, does that include a section or some type of, you mentioned it, site plan stormwater.

Is there anything to deal with?

Well, the development plan is... Development height is almost always going to be addressed in the building application itself.

Because that's generally where we get into vertical construction.

There's certainly an opportunity within the context of the development plan to say, hey, this is the height that we're looking to get that.

And we just encourage people to submit elevations at that point in time so that we can address zoning related issues.

Because you're just saying that the development plan is going to be the mechanism that we review for compliance sounding.

Let's let's let me finish this and let's go roundtaping and don't worry.

One of the aspects here to keep in mind also is that state law requires

that we also be able to, that we also allow for someone to go straight to the final site plan phase.

So one can also stick straight to that phase.

So as an incentive, if I'm understanding, as an incentive you're providing

If you go to the developer plan route first, you get to submit an approval for it.

You get to submit a building permit.

Applications simultaneously with the final site.

Which is our current standard.

The other thing I'd know to know though is for projects that are subject to a minor development plan, those can

Those were encouraging folks to submit everything all at once, including mental health application because a site plan under the conflict of this zoning ordinance, right, because this document is only implementing the zoning ordinance.

The zoning ordinance contemplates something called a site plan for all development activity.

And the reason for that is it's recognizing that under our current ordinance, there isn't something that is specifically called out to regulate and review zoning.

Right now, people submit a building permit application, which is specifically designed for the review of compliance with the building code.

And we do a zoning application based on that document.

All we're doing at this point is specifically calling out something called a site plan with a development plan component of it to do the zoning review so that that site plan is tied to zoning review.

And we're not making the building permit

kind of do double duty there.

But we want to try and maintain as much consistency with the existing process as possible.

Right.

So Lyle, Rory, you just got here.

We got a hard stop at seven because we got meetings to go to.

And what we're going to do is just go around the room and ask questions and make recommendations.

I only wrote this thing in the last hour.

I guess you kind of yell at the window.

So I'm walking by guys.

Come on.

My main thing, I guess, is with the minor development plan, we say basically that a layman can do it.

But then we require a lot of things that a layman cannot do, presumably.

And sometimes those things are important.

And then sometimes they don't seem super important.

For example, let's say I own a house on two acres.

And I want to add a 600 foot, oh, that's a major, sorry, a 400 foot

Okay, this is actually, I guess, on the major one.

If I'm, oh wait, no, yeah, existing landscape features that define including all individual trees of eight inch caliper or greater.

Like, is there some way of saying, like,

Yeah, I mean, at this point, I'm happy to take the comments and feedback, right?

I feel like you're kind of putting me on the spot here to try and respond on this.

No, we're taking the comments and feedback, and I appreciate the comments and feedback.

If one of the challenges you're identifying is in the landscaping element, that's done.

Happy to take the feedback.

How do you know that you're going to not require it?

Because I didn't have a pre-app meeting for this, right?

Right.

And then you'll say, this is what I want.

We anticipate, under our current, how things currently run, it's very rare for a document just to show up.

An applicant has reached out to a planner prior to submitting something.

We're anticipating that under the new process, too.

You've at least reached out to a planner.

It might be helpful to put in there some language of like, we encourage you to do that.

I think the point remains well taken that for the minor development plans, these need to certainly mirror the existing process.

If we're talking about a small addition,

There is likely not going to be a free application meeting.

Yeah, I think not a major one.

Well, so one thing about, I mean,

We'll have to kind of figure that part out as we go along, but there is a requirement in the new code that all lots have landscape requirements.

And so we're trying to navigate this new permit.

We're also trying to navigate this new requirement for single-family lots too.

So we anticipate a work in progress, but all of these discussion points are really helpful as we're

Yeah, I mean, totally reasonable.

I wonder if we could maybe put in languages like he's put in enough of this stuff to show that you met the requirement and then like, not necessarily everything, right?

Like, I would have to say I have enough trees that I hit 20%.

And then I can stop having trees, something like that.

We're the trees.

They're not all trees.

It's just a lot of using.

Similarly, the F is like indicative residential units are sale or rental number of bedrooms, all that stuff.

Oh yeah.

And then sort of similar subject like, you know, area that matters, but like, I feel like things are going to get real weird once you have a bunch of sublots and then someone who owns a sublot wants to do something that has nothing to do with all the other sublots.

Easy when it's some,

person doing something on the whole zoning lot and maybe making sublots out of it.

But then like, if I'm, keep using the tree example, do I have to start looking at my neighbor's trees and counting those and surveying those in order to make a change?

I mean, sometimes you have tree requirements part of the whole zone.

For sublots, we talked about the fact that the sublot is different than a zoning lot.

So the zoning lot needs to meet the requirements.

So trade off there because on the one hand, we're opening up an opportunity for ownership where

where that would not otherwise be available or would only be available through an extensive condorization process.

This is an easy one.

In section 2.2.1, we have a number 6 and a number 11.

There's nothing in those.

Zoning map amendments.

I think we got an email about this, but we're requiring both massing diagrams and elevations.

I feel like the massing diagram is actually a pretty reasonable thing to require.

Elevation seems a little much with the caveat that like in some cases, whether

It gets approved.

Well, that's true.

But on a rezoning, we're making a legislative decision.

And that checking against those things will come back in when you're doing the later reviews.

We can, I think we can come back and put our heads together about considering taking those, turning those into maize or, you know, optional submissions.

But I feel like we usually have massing, I don't know about elevations, like thinking about like the Lingford one, like we had just like the blank buildings and narrow architectural detail.

I would say that's even true.

I don't know.

I guess like we would have had elevations for like 240 surely.

Some of them anyway.

I've got one that's easy on page eight for interest course application referred to the ERV.

The dates, the start times, the end times, when the clock restarts.

Somebody's got to go in there and write four extra sentences to make it clear.

Following the middle of a complete application is yet undefined.

The European will have 60 days from the application deadline.

Not the submission date of the deadline, whatever that is, to take action within the first two consecutive ERB meetings following the deadline, which may be more than 60 days between after those.

Following the first meeting, the ERB may approve or deny the COA, or defer action to the next ERB at which time the ERB must approve or deny the COA.

And this 60 days, complete application, application deadline, submittal.

When does the clock start?

When does it stop?

And if you read this in one way, you can't get to the second meeting in a lot of cases because it might be way more than 60 days by the time you get to the second.

What can be helpful for this and others?

Yes, we received that.

Since we're talking about diagrams, I hate to ask this, but a chart of which types of plans depend on other plans.

Is this required?

Isn't this required?

Yes.

It could get sort of like a table of art.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I feel like I could make a pretty intense flow chart out of it, depending on how many moving parts there are.

But in reading it, it started to get confusing.

And maybe that would be easier.

I think Ashley Davies mentioned this too.

What's up with the public meetings and the transportation?

So it's a transportation demand management plan.

It's a new section that has never existed before.

And it asks a developer, if you're a project that's over 50,000 square feet, to provide a plan for mitigating or reducing the impacts on your local transportation and parking systems.

So we are simply asking in this instance that they have a meeting with the community and talk about those transportation and parking.

So this is sort of a stalking horse to give the developer an opportunity to perhaps explain that my 40 cars entering and leaving this parking lot are actually not going to impact the congestion on this road.

and maybe there's some solutions, maybe in that conversation, they can identify some solutions to parking or transportation needs within the local neighborhoods that they can be, that they can be involved in that plan.

Yeah, I noted this.

Is this a proxy or a stalking force for having a more general meeting, really?

And are we the transportation management?

When we're that big, we're actually sort of demanding a public meeting of some sort.

Yeah.

So this minor major historic review, if you appeal the administrative review to the DA or through to minor as a major.

I mean, I don't think we have a clear distinction between minor and major.

We have a general description of general requirements.

And then you just have a minor historic review where you're saying that everything on this list in general requirements is a minor.

It has the distinction between a major

I think the list is for both.

I think as it was earlier, there was a notion that the list was for both.

I think it would be a fair comment to be back.

Are there some of these things that are more applicable to a major?

And should we do separate lists?

Yeah.

And the topic says to meet with staff before.

Yeah.

It does say that.

Remember the minor in the staff review?

Major is something that's going to the BAR or the ER.

Actually, all ERBs, it begins as staff.

This gets called that.

But that division isn't clearly made at the outset.

It does start from the assumption that the first thing somebody's looked at in this is the ordinance itself, but a reminder that minor is a staff review and a major is a BAR review.

We're looking at this as a hand-holding device.

Yeah, but I'm sure he's going to pay us to that.

He really thought of the whole response to it.

No, no, no.

Ignore 6-7 and people will go to here.

Well, that's to our advantage that you could say like the requirement or the suggestion of doing a model.

We're probably not going to do that on my back in any instance.

We're only allowing digital models now.

They used to be able to come to us with a little physical model.

Since we're on the topic of 3D model, can we clarify that sentence to be two-dimensional representations of a 3D model?

Because the public has come in before and said, well, you need to bring in a 3D model, or you need to bring in a sketch-up model that we can play with in the theater.

Well, you said that.

So on development plans minor, and I'm sort of a little piggybacking on Rory, is there a threshold we can find where the development plan really is

A token review, like for a 400 square foot addition to a single, you know, to my existing dwelling.

I mean, how much detail do we really need in a circumstance like that?

I'm just, you know, I'm just bumping out my, my living room into my backyard event.

And our expectation, Matt, jump in at any point on this as well.

But our expectation is that because we've not said it needs to be prepared by an engineer, architect or a surveyor, and that is that someone can submit

A relatively simple plan that shows their boundaries, which is essentially what we get today.

They've written in four feet this way, 20 feet this way, four feet back.

It looks like it fits the setbacks to me.

And we measured these setbacks.

Our anticipation is we're trying to, this is like a glass, we're trying to fill the glass up all the way, what you could have in a minor before you go to major.

So it's, it's, it was either cutting it into like six different categories, or having it be everything up to the level

written down is minor, but it doesn't mean that it's not saying you have to provide everything, it's saying it may include this improvement.

Maybe a little more clarity on that in this.

Can we also get some clarity on what that, sorry, I don't know why I can't talk today.

What the cutoff is between major and minor development plans.

It says residential projects of less than two units or an addition of 500 square feet.

Yeah, that sounds like a good question.

So we definitely, I think, could have a conversation, could feedback in that 500 square feet, because that is a little more trying to get into that realm of additions.

The two units, you start to trip stormwater regulations.

So we were trying to use that threshold for everything that could not have to go under stormwater regulations.

because that's tied to residential unit count.

Once you go three units, more than three and more units, you start to get into providing stormwater management plans, E&S plans.

Isn't that also like 6,000 square feet?

Yes.

Would the language instead be projects of two units or less?

Or a major development plan would be anything more than two units or a commercial addition greater than 500 square feet?

We definitely can look at that.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

I agree, but let's play out the example.

Right now, that's as written as a major.

If you do that, but it's two units, it's a minor.

Or is it also still a major?

No.

No, that's a good point.

So I've got a single family house.

Let's play this out.

We've got a single family house and adding one more unit to it.

So you're two units.

And let's say it is 700 square feet of an addition onto the house, but we're at two units.

I still think it would be minor, but you would run into stormwater having to do in lieu of.

You'd have to do something because you're over 6,000 square feet.

So there would be a stormwater plan, how detailed that plan is.

And that gets back to this concept that's going to be very different, where we're going, having a development plan, which deals with zoning regulations.

But at the end of the day, before you get a land disturbance permit or a building permit, you have to have a site plan.

And that site plan is a collection of all these documents.

Some of these documents might be a checklist.

It might be just a check.

It might just be, you know,

that you've done it, but you still need a site plan at the end of the day before you can get any land disturbance permit.

Stormwater at zoning or stormwater at site plan?

Stormwater at site plan.

So how we anticipate this is stormwater is not in the development plan.

It needs to be considered.

This comes into more when we're talking about larger developments.

I know jumping ahead from the question, but if you had commercial development,

On that development plan, you know you're going to need to provide some sort of detention.

So you're not designing the detention at the development planning level.

You are showing this.

I'm going to have detention in this general area.

Public Works Engineering will review it.

They'll provide comments basically saying, you know, you're going to have to have quality quantity.

You're going to have to have all these things as you get into your stormwater management plan, which will be a standard

So it should be something that would help the developers, again, get through that easier.

Okay, I know I need to do the water detention.

This is generally where it's going to be.

I have my development plan that's doing all my zoning checks.

I get that development plan.

So let me, you don't wrap up for a minute.

Are there any more questions about land versus major?

And to guess the confusion on that, and do we envision you were doing that checklist?

I mean, it seems to me that the burden from going from two to three units on a residential lot was pretty dramatic.

Therefore, if we're dealing with residential lots and going from two to three units, do we anticipate pulling together some plug-and-play tools?

Here's the easiest way for you to do your stormwater.

Here's the straightforward sort of to make it so that if you want to build a tribe, all of a sudden, you don't have to hire an engineer or an architect just to navigate this.

Yeah, I don't know that I can say I've specifically gone into this saying that about stormwater.

Well, I mean, that idea, that idea in other realms, and we'll touch on this a little bit in the presentation of the other end of this.

But that idea of how do we make this easier for the smaller scale project?

Because those are the ones that are going to most struggle with these issues, right?

Because they don't have the revenue.

You don't have an extra 20 grand line around to deal with this stuff.

And, you know, there's a variety of places where we can explore those types of tools.

Tree canopy is going to be one of those, I think, making it easier to measure tree canopy.

Standardize a canopy per stem rule.

So I don't have to depend on what my, you know, right now we ask people to project 10 years from now.

But canopy, who do you hire?

Tell me what the, with the

Camp, he's going to be 10 years from now.

But instead, Dr. Trilis just says how big it'll be per tree, per type of tree.

You just say, I'm going to have a 26 foot tall tree here in 10 years, because it says.

Because it says so.

Right.

But that's the idea, right?

That's how we simplify.

These rules for application, particularly for the smaller scale projects.

Well, I think this will come over time.

There's something to sure put people through that.

Yeah.

When I was in Hampton, we had the Virginia, we had the Chesapeake Bay Act.

And it had enhanced stormwater requirements above and beyond what we have here.

But one of the things we did is we developed a standard landscaping unit.

It was a unit, and it basically said, all right, you run the calculations, you need three units, and each unit consists of two bushes and a tree.

That's what you need to put on.

The language that I've been wordsmithing for the development plan minor, replacing up to two dwelling units on one lot, my suggestion was to metric part of the zoning code would be up to 3,000 square foot footprint, just to use the same language consistently.

Yeah, I also feel like the non-residential part should be footprint-based as well.

Right.

Because the code uses my phone.

And what are you thinking about Lancaster?

If I'm adding an addition balance, right?

Yeah, well, you know, what if we just go up?

What if I just bump up my attic and add 500 square feet?

It depends on if there's transparency requirements under the new code.

Right, but am I counting trees in that circumstance?

That's ground floor only.

Depends on what districts.

Well, we ran in.

One of the things that is working around is under the code, under the new code it talks about.

needing these development plans when you do construction.

And then it defines construction.

And so it is a lot broader than what we have dealt with in the past, because a lot of these things would have been handled under building permit.

When you just submit a building for me, you never deal with a planner.

You're submitting a building permit and zoning and buildings, looking at things like setbacks, square footage, things like that.

That is now a little bit larger.

We're hoping to keep it as smooth, but it now involves that within a development plan.

So yes, we mean, we were at least anticipating some majority of these development plans.

The minor would not include all this information.

We have it down here just because we are trying to catch everything.

because we tend to, if it's not written down, that depends to be where the fight comes in, if we need that information.

That also goes back to what's a completed application and what's a submittal because, I mean, they can make a good faith effort at

Well, most of this doesn't apply, does it?

You say at first glance, yeah, this probably doesn't apply.

And then it does.

For the small stuff, I think we will get into a good, we have a good example of how we used to do things.

So I think it'll.

And procedurally, with the new permitting software, the first step in every permit when it comes into that software is a review for completeness.

And I would argue that if we get through that review of completeness and we say this application is complete, however we arrive at that conclusion, if we then later say, oh, no, we needed this, I would not turn around and remove and say, you've no longer met this first step.

And I think our, I think our threshold will be fairly low for this minor stuff.

I don't think we're going to, it's going to be the larger stuff that we're looking to make sure we can do any, say, an actual review of it.

And this may be threading as far away from getting to answer to Michael's questions.

But with the resubmits on these plans, we've got this, if you've resubmitted and got three different ones, now you've got a full boat, new application fee going.

I think some maturely Armstrong's comments on that were, had some merit, which is,

Well, fine, but if you're going to do that, everybody has to weigh in on the first submission and be done with weighing in on the first submission or else, you know.

No new comments.

Which is an issue we've been discussing at length and understand.

There's no new comments.

Now, obviously, if the plans change in some way, you can make new comments on your changes.

My answer to the question asked generates more questions.

That's a different scenario than

And I do think this is one area I do think our new tracking software will, with OnBase, which is very similar to BlueBee, it will be able to track changes.

Which of course we don't have now, we have paper copies, we're looking at submittal one and submittal eight.

Stone knives and bear skins, we got to do better than that.

Right.

So on the division between minor and major, the recommendation I heard was to look at footprint print.

Yeah, 3,000 square feet.

Oh, 3,000 square foot.

We can also look at footprint.

We'll take a look at some options of footprint because I also, the point that was made earlier that if you can do two units and that's a certain amount of square footage and the addition is less than that, there's an issue there that the two should be somewhat synonymous.

The other thing I want to, you know,

Matt raised the issue that we drew the line on two units because that's synonymous with the stormwater.

I just want to open the door.

Yeah, I was going to say, so my understanding of the stormwater ordinance is that we are more restrictive than state law in what qualifies as needing it.

We do.

And that state law is like an acre or two.

State law says if it's two units or under, you have to exempt it.

But that doesn't say that we can't exempt more.

I don't know that you're actually on that.

But we've said that our environmental regulatory program is something that we need to look at.

We said that about a year ago now, and now we're past the last big project and looking at our next big projects.

But I just kind of want to put on the table because, frankly, because Charlie Racer is one of his items.

He talked about a minor development being at six units.

I think six units is a bit high, but I wanted to see if you guys had any reaction to that.

Two units is also almost.

Is that the cutoff in the residential building code as well?

Two units?

Yes.

So at that point, when you go above that, you have to have a design professional doing the drawings anyways.

Well, unless they're townhouses and then then they're completely different.

True.

Or they could all be cottages and then they're all IRC and they don't even touch each other.

They just have them.

But so

Well, we're trying to make the development plan mirror

the document that people are currently submitting with their building permits.

And so the smaller levels, meaning that you can do your hand sketch drawing with your ruler and such to still provide that ability and then have the documentation that they need from the building standpoint.

So we were trying to

Keep that as much as possible because

Folks are going to see, folks are going to hear, oh, everyone requires a development plan and like flip out because that's brand new.

But really, we're framing it as, okay, when you do a building permit, you have to have a site drawing anyway.

So let's get that framed site drawing with the new requirements and the code and then deal with the building code stuff at the same time.

So we're trying to make

That makes sense to me.

I think we give so much of what's in here on this one.

I actually think a lot of the stuff we're talking about is getting to the point of why I asked about it.

There's a lot of fuzzy zones.

So just submitting a site plan without understanding the verticality of it, it's hard to judge whether or not it conforms to zoning alone.

I was just, part of what I was asking too, because we were talking about some of these size footprints, and does that not apply to, you know, if it's a 500 square foot addition, but like you said, it goes up multiple stories.

It just, it's not clear to me.

Yeah, it's not specifically stated, but on the minor

I think it's in the minor development plan.

There's a lot of slice density, coverage, building setback, built-in dimensions, high-fassing.

I'm assuming that's another way to say give us an elevation drawing without that produce.

But having a clear language on the actual, what drawings you're requiring might make it easiest.

You, like, I feel like we need to, I mean, we kind of talked about this, but like the pre-app step of like, you go to a planner or go on the internet and you say, I want to build a thing here.

This is the basic thing I want.

And I feel like you just need a checklist sent back to you of like, oh, you need this one, this one, and this one.

Some sort of navigator or pilot.

Roll.

Yeah, I mean, that's an employee designated to do that.

We're just a list of if you're in this neighborhood, you go to this planner or even just a web forum and someone figures it out.

They've been in other municipalities where you've established that conversation early and it does kind of change because then you realize that you guys are resources for people to make sure they don't make a wrong turn.

And I think that changes the dynamic as opposed to being gatekeepers to what they're trying to get done.

Sort of more like now we're here to kind of get this streamlining save.

One thing is, I just made some clarity on this process, or maybe we'll just figure this out as we go, but I mean, currently it seems like the site plans get submitted.

much longer for the site plan to be approved, the new building permit.

And I'm wondering, you know, we've got, it looks like you're allowed three revisions.

So how much of the architecture is tied into your development plan?

For example, if you change your windows, you change your amount of transparency, as long as you're still compliant, but stuff is changing, is that considered a revision to your development plan?

Where did we land when we were checking the transparency?

I don't think we really landed on that.

I mean, because this is something that's very different than what we are used to doing.

Because we typically, we would only run into these elevation issues in ABC districts.

And so as planners, we were very much focused on top-down plan view under our current code.

And so I don't think we've landed on that for this new code.

Because it is kind of hard.

I mean, the code actually calls out some very vertical elements.

I think I know the answer to your question.

All right.

So what we're counting in terms of the number of submissions you can make are the formal submissions.

I've submitted.

I've gotten comments back.

I'm now submitting my responses to those comments.

So those are a set of formal submissions.

You complete the development plan.

You get that approved.

You decide to make changes to your plans.

At that point in time, it's simply an assessment.

Are these major modifications that require an amendment to that plan?

That's the assessment.

and we would make that, that's ultimately a decision of the zoning administrator.

You've made some changes.

And that revision, that's going to apply to both development plans and the final site plan document.

We received that comment as well.

What we're trying to do there, our current code identifies that you get

Dubai to the Apple to get your plan correct.

That's not something that we have been wed to.

But we're finding that there's a lot of challenge out there with the number of resubmissions that we continuously have.

And it's because

because there's no penalty and this provides an opportunity for the applicants to be serious about their submission because if they're not then they're going to have to pay again if they can't get their act together.

and that saves that saves review time on our end that saves their clients money.

There's there's a lot of opportunity for efficiencies through enforcement of that.

And so that is that is something that we're and we've at this point we have a lot of support for for doing that because when we're on revision 10

That's something, you know, I mean, that's years and years and years.

I mean, it makes sense, but this all makes sense.

I just want to, and I think it also, I'm

It is helpful that the building permit gets tied closer to the site plan submission, because it always happens, and every job that we've worked on, the site plan is done, and we have to change it because the architecture has had to change.

Well, and another thing that that ties into that is, if, if things change along the way, you may need to update your development plan.

Okay, sorry, I'm going to try and be quick with my topics.

Talk about the model thing.

Under on the historic review, if significant substantive modifications to the approved design are necessary due to the development plan or final site plan staff following consultation with the COA or cargo application.

I just procedure thing, I don't know how you guys are going to do that, but

Who determines what's significant?

Is it the planners can determine that?

Is the preservation planner going to see every application and be able to make that determination?

This is very similar to current process.

That preservation planner looks at iterations.

And when differences are found, then those are pointed out.

Right, I guess it just, if it's on the preservation plan or to find all the differences, and they're not pointed out to that person, stuff sometimes might get my fault in practice.

And there's been some some things that have happened in the site plan process.

where buildings that got a COA may not have gotten that COA as the site plan been understood at the beginning, if that makes sense.

That have occurred because the site plan review process.

Correct me on anything I say wrong, Matt, as I go.

But one of the things we're aiming for is by making the final site plan kind of a collection of plans and permits.

So I've gone through the development plan.

I've got my zoning review in place.

I'm now independently doing stormwater review public facilities and I'm also getting my COAs and any special exceptions or anything in that venue that I need to do and then all of that comes together in the final site plan.

One of the things that's allowing us to do is get away from iterative reviews where the planner has to go and look it.

The only thing that's happening at this point as we're going through reviews four, five and six is we're making tweaks to the stormwater system.

And yet, Matt has to look at each and every single one of those to make sure that a change isn't happening that is affecting the zoning.

What a waste of Matt coming.

So what we're aiming for is, he's out of that process.

The final site plan comes in.

It incorporates all of these previous plans.

They're now bundled together into one final site plan.

He does one review, goes through and says, OK, I see a place where a change has been made.

We fix that and off we go.

rather than him looking at iteration four, iteration five, iteration six, and having to watch for us.

Because talk about an opportunity for things to be missed because all they're talking about is stormwater.

I've got this stack of things to look at.

I'm not going to look at iteration five.

And then something changes.

And then, oh, that's a new comment.

Just great.

The historic conservation review, I thought we changed this of the code.

It says 30 days for review.

We turned it back to 60.

If 30 days is problematic because the BAR cannot defer a project, so if an applicant doesn't show up, which has happened in the past, we just have to deny the project.

That is something that we saw in the code and we've had lots of discussions about that.

I thought we fixed that.

Sort of seems like maybe you could put in a code meeting

And if you're not there.

Yeah.

That should count as like, I don't know, not.

Yes.

All right.

Well, then I guess, never mind on that.

Signage, it looks like it's tied to the development plan and if you change your signage, you have to modify your development plan.

Signage is currently part of the site plan process.

It's sign location.

It's not like final design.

And so that mirrors that process.

And so they have to identify where those things are going to be.

That is what we currently have in place.

It is a fee per sign.

The fee schedule should be noted.

We basically kept it level.

We had to rename some stuff.

There were some new permits that didn't exist previously.

And so we found the most similar permit and applied the fee to that.

But the objective here was keep fees the same.

We're not going to try to increase fees.

The only exception to that is that we created a new fee.

If you're doing an after-the-fact permit submission,

Then we double the fee.

And that's the way we treat building permits.

If you come in and say, I already built this building.

I forgot to get my building permit.

Yeah, it slipped my mind.

That's not usually how this goes.

You then submit a building permit application and it's double the fee.

We were looking at some other communities and they do the same thing for various zoning permits and stuff like that.

So that sort of reminds me, it does seem like we need some sort of emergency situation for treatment.

So there is the code specifically notes that if there is a in danger situation, whatever, that it doesn't have to go through this permit process.

Who would verify that?

What stops anybody from saying it's an emergency?

I was in danger of eating out of that tree.

I've got a bunch of comments on the tree thing.

It just seems like I'm not sure how it's going to be enforced other than people tattling on each other.

Well, no, but it's, but I'm also worried about, you know, again, someone in a single family residence, they could be in their backyard, and it's, you know, it's a nuisance tree, it's got to come down.

And they have to, the way the, this is written, it says, you have to provide all the following.

And I mean, so they have to show a plan of all the trees on their property, and then have a tree replacement plan.

It seems like the important thing would be to focus on trees that are in front of the earths.

Well, it's more about tree canopy as a whole city, right?

The purpose of the tree permitting today is to ensure that the tree that comes around doesn't create a zoning violation.

If I was required to do a buffer between my building and the next door that incorporated a whole load of trees, it would be terribly embarrassing if for the city, if five years later they cut down all the trees.

And there's a host of those examples, including the canopy requirement.

And technically our existing

Zoning Ordinance, right now it says if you want to take down any tree in the city of Charlottesville, you have to submit a site plan.

That's what ours ordinance says today.

Over a certain caliber.

Six or eight inch camera.

So we've reduced the requirement in this from what it is today.

He's called attention to everybody that exists.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Sure.

Well, so I definitely would change the language that says add a minimum provide the following information, because there is stuff in here that I think you're going to find isn't necessary for someone just trying to get rid of a junk tree in their backyard.

And on the on the sort of like just kind of heuristics in general, rather than counting a renoodle thing, like

I feel like I should be able to go on GIS and say, here's my 2022 aerial.

It's 90% tree canopy.

Clearly, I'm over the 20% requirement.

If it's, I don't know, probably over 30% or 40% at some visual amount, it's far enough above that you don't need to figure out the specific number.

I mean, it sounds like an evolution of where we'll go.

I mean, there are some single family lots where there is a tree.

And if they take that tree, they're definitely in violation.

And I will say the canopy, with the latest update from the tree commission on the appropriate tree list, that canopy is shrunk, where normally we would have taken three trees to meet that 10%.

Now it's going to take six trees.

How does that work?

because each tree gets... Each tree has a number.

Each tree, when you go into the master tree list, each tree has a coverage number that shows where it would be at at 10 to 20 years.

I can't remember.

I think it was inaccurate.

I mean, it was like ideal condition and like it has everything it ever needs.

Okay.

What else you got?

The community meetings.

While I am okay with people developing big buildings getting yelled at, I do think we should allow those to be virtual.

Not just because it's more convenient for people, but like, it's more convenient for the neighbors to the extent that those tend to get a lot more actual participation from the community, which means they're more effective.

Hybrid?

You mean hybrid?

I think there needs to be little ladies and you'd be able to walk in the room and talk.

Page 21, reconcile number four and number five.

That's application deadline.

Accept is otherwise provided here and the administrative planning commission shall be more disapproved of subcommissioned flat within 60 days after the date such applications is submitted.

And number five, neither the administrator nor the planning commission shall be required to approve the submission plan in fewer than 60 days after the date it was officially submitted.

Well, if you have to approve it within 60 days, then you are in every case approving it.

I don't get it.

Well, if you're saying you must approve or deny it within 60 days, you're not required to take action in fewer than 60 days.

Yeah, it's just saying the requirement is 60 days.

But if it's within 60 days, within... Well, I'm saying it's very confusing as to what the issue is, to what the actual timeline is.

We're saying we're not required to act in fewer than 60 days.

I think your confusion is such a fact.

It's state law, which is very poorly organized.

So.

We're just saying the planning commission shall not be required in fewer than 60 days.

Except on day 60.

Yeah.

So that provision of state law is probably saying you can't pass a local ordinance to make it faster.

I'm sure this was in our prior ordinance and it was a good idea at the time.

The first iteration of this

was a double bid.

He's cut and paste out of our existing zoning ordinance into this document, and I'm sure this language was in our existing ordinance.

Something that several of the public have commented on.

I see what they're saying.

We're acquiring in the minor development plan a lot of information that only the city has, that they would have to come to the city, ask for the information, and then give them the information that they just got from us.

Could we just have the information?

I think we should talk about that because right now what we do, let me use an example of building permits and floodbots.

Right now somebody smits a building permit and there's somebody who looks to see it.

And some of that is doable within our GIS systems.

I mean, from an ideal scenario,

The version of this that I like is if we have the information, we're making it publicly available and pointing people to it so they can easily collect it without having to do a whole lot of work and then submit it.

Because that does give us the advantage that on the floodplain one, again, we've got an example.

I'd hate to surprise.

You now have to build your building with two feet of additional elevation.

Here's your on the floodplain.

The underlying comment is making sure that the minor development plan is easily, that one can easily pull together the information to submit it, because that's the one where we're expecting non-professionals to be putting together the materials.

One of the areas that would be a little bit of a concern that we've run into this in the past is, and this is why we no longer have the utility data on GIS is because that data was being used in submittals instead of actually actually having those sort of having those utilities marked.

property owners to be fair.

GIS as a blanket disclaimer.

Yeah, that's this, you know, it's general.

It's not pretty.

I mean, the property lines are not exact.

You cannot do not rely on this in Lua, blah, blah, blah.

If you just went into GIS printed out your aerial

So Green, what are you missing?

I'm good, I think that's a lot of my questions.

Well, you've been unusually polite today.

In general, it doesn't hurt me a sense.

I have got some stuff that I can send by each year.

Let's just type those and things like that.

The conceptual orders are pretty detailed.

It's high level, we'd like to hear it.

No, there's some areas that are confusingly written.

Okay.

Is there a reason that we can't submit a $100,000 bond?

It has to be $100,001.

George, 29.

Can I ask you a second?

George, 29.

Such thought would be more than $100,000 from the state code.

I don't, and it's, again, we're, we're stumbling through this too, because some of this stuff has been separated.

Well, but it has to be more than $100,000.

Yeah, we'll look into it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm okay with it being $100,000.

No, I mean,

With these smaller bonds, most of the time, whatever this may be, wide has to be $100,000.

With smaller bonds, you essentially have to have liquid assets to cover it.

So you might as well just show up at the NDS and hand them a certified check.

You just say, hold on to this.

We have a closet with bags of cash.

No, we don't.

We have a safe.

Things, one on the list of requirements on age 20-ish, 2021.

It's like 10 things in your final flat in the current ordinance, which it's also different.

It says, I don't have to go into the funding ordinance, but it says the agent can grant exceptions or whatever, and we removed that.

I don't know.

The agent of the subdivision, the agent of the unit.

Can you create exceptions to the planning requirements?

Yeah.

Another thing?

I mean, the agent I've already used.

I don't know.

And then there are a bunch of places in that whole section where it says subdivision code, which I assume is copied from the old code, but now it's just the development code.

We can reference the chapter and probably share.

Actually not required to the class.

I think it's just a little bit minor.

Just under the office for review.

In the case of a demolition request for structural integrity, is that issued the application?

What is this?

This is under the 2.2.

So in the case of a demolition request or structural review of the issue, the applicant shall provide structural evaluation and cost estimates for rehabilitation prepared by a professional engineer.

I'm sure it's probably in our existing code.

Is there a reason to require cost estimates?

And is that reasonable rehabilitation just to make it structurally sound?

The engineer says spend two million dollars using the government's historic structure.

Go and do it.

But it just seems like the engineer is not the one who would make a cost estimate that's going to get the contractor involved at that point.

I'm just wondering if that's the necessary that requirements.

And that may be a question for Jeff Walker.

It may be.

Four.

This seemed odd to me.

You guys know this is conservation districts.

We say you only need that estimate if it's not your primary residence.

It's not living in it.

That's where it's in vacation.

Rory, come on, come on, let's go do something else.

Yeah, plenty of things, Lady York's manual.

This is a manual thing.

Critical slopes, I thought we were making that a hearing.

And then I read the manual and says, no, you're required, just a meeting.

or something.

Just notice.

And then I went back to the ordinance and it says it does not say hearing, except then it does sort of say hearing because staff will provide a staff report and recommendations to the Planning Commission in advance of public hearing.

But it doesn't say public hearing.

Do we do we change our minds and say no hearing?

No.

It's not a hearing.

We have debated this back and forth.

Yeah, it became a special exception, and the special exceptions are not hearings.

So all the same thing it is now, it just doesn't require a hearing.

They have to speak in matters of the public.

Except then we left that one bit that says in advance, the public hearing.

OK.

But that does mean that, I mean, it's also always that there's discretion.

If there's a whole bunch of people there and somebody comes up and the chair always had the discretion to open it.

I remember at one point we were trying to pull out the environmental and more stormwater related stuff of critical slopes.

For temporary use permits, am I understanding that that could be a hand sketch, the type of things that are requested on there?

Yeah, 2.6.4.

It looks like it can.

I think it's a hand sketch type.

Special use permit deals with the users.

So it's a use where there needs to be an opportunity for some discretionary consideration.

Special use permit does have a public hearing associated with it.

This is something new, so I might want to talk about this because we've never had this before.

This body is very familiar with special use permits coming in front of you.

Mainly to get changes to the zoning where they're asking for the special use because they had that caveat that they did.

Also, in addition to changing, getting special use, ask for changes to setbacks, height, parking, and parking, which is an issue.

So this separates it out.

So now someone can come forward and just say, I want city council to make changes to dimensional requirements.

And it'll go through the very similar path, especially in use, but it'll get some public hearing.

But it will come for this body for recommendation.

But it has to do with dimensions, massing, things like that.

Set the bags.

Except for ones listed.

All of the things that are subject to special exception, one could pursue a variance to seek those.

And the notion was, and I think why there was advocacy, frankly, within the development community, for the special exception process, is that the standard of review is less than a variance, because a variance is a hardship standard.

And so if you were only to rely on a variance, then you would have to demonstrate a hardship.

And if you swing in this, you've got to go to quarters and something in the city to

The appeal is to the circuit court, not to somebody else.

Well, it's a special exception.

You're going all the way to the city council to get the decision.

Right.

But with the BZA, if you don't make it on the BZA, you don't go anywhere else.

So let's talk about the official submission date.

We've got some concerns about that.

It's got a lot of people send us emails in the middle of meeting.

So if an application is deemed completed prior to the next submission deadline date, the application will be given that date as it

and

after the meeting started, he says, it might be helpful to everybody, including staff, for them to, for that not to all bunch everything up, because then things get bunched up, and then you have five things to, you have a deadline on on the same day, rather than everything being staggered.

Yes.

Consistence.

We're trying, we would like to actually create this consistency.

So if you know you are submitting and you have a submittal day, let's use the first and 15 as an example.

You know you're getting your comments on very specific dates.

Instead of this running, chasing the rabbit.

Well, I turned this in on the second.

It was reviewed for completeness.

So maybe eight, 10 days after that.

So it was at the date.

So now I'm expecting my comments back at a different date.

So this, we're trying to create clarity that this is very specific use.

And our current code actually was worded this way.

It was to have submittal dates, not you submit, that's the date.

There were submittal dates that became, everything tied to that date.

Okay.

Sorry, we're saying we're saying the completion determination and these schedule are divided in 5.2.c.

Is that in the code?

That's the other weird thing about this document.

You do have to look at this document with the code next to it.

We have an update.

We have a regular preschedule now.

There's not a preschedule in the code list.

Oh, it just pops about.

It's established by them.

Well, something we've done just on that topic, inconsistently, is we've exempted affordable housing from certain fees.

What are the fees, jumps to mind, I think some others as well.

I think that is one of the things that Office of Community Solutions is looking at on their side.

The state enables a

and Ables and Nis Baude to do a blanket exception for the political housing projects.

What are the odds we can accommodate, say, an expedited review?

Well, maybe it gets you some sort of quicker

It does.

It's 21 days.

21 under current code.

The one thing too, I will say, this is really talking about development plans.

Again, it's hard to kind of separate these things out, talking about the development plans.

And typically, this goes back to kind of that full review cycle and what Missy was saying earlier, I don't think we anticipate hitting four for development plans.

And when you look at historically our review, your zoning stuff is typically met after one or two rounds.

When we get into that eight and nine round, it's all stormwater instructability.

So we actually are anticipating this going smoother.

You know, you're getting this development plan through in one or two rounds because that under our current situation, that 36 page plan that gets dropped on our desk, two sheets of that, two or three sheets of that are the development plan.

and so pulling that out and that should get approved fairly quickly.

It is part of the final site plan.

That's where it comes back together.

Yep.

But we don't have that schedule and stuff under final site plan.

Maybe no, we do.

I don't know.

It does.

They have state regulations that actually do not line up with site plan.

Should we, is it worth getting that in here, just so people know?

What we are hoping, one of the goals we're hoping with this is

Under straight state regulation, we can't prevent someone from coming in and dropping off all their documents and saying, here's my final site plan.

And it goes through each of its process.

One of the goals our department has in this is that we're trying to use a carrot to say, if you get your development plan approved first, go through that process first.

That's something you could take to a bank and say, this is a viable development.

I can get my loan.

And then if you get that approval and then come back and submit these other documents, we'll review your building permit at the same time that these other things are going through the process.

Because currently what we do right now is we say you have to have an approved site plan before building will even start looking at your building plans because they don't want to do that until they know there's an approved document.

It's an interesting question, though.

I haven't read the rules, regulations, unlike what do they mean by site plan?

There's a variety of definitions of site plan out there.

You can tell you in Massachusetts, a site plan did not include storm water.

Virginia is the only place where I've worked where people say, oh, my site plan has a stormwater plan associated with it.

And that's just, those were separate documents completely.

And the site plan always had to go through the planning commissioner before it could be signed.

And nobody did, nobody even started a stormwater plan while I shouldn't say it started.

All right, we've got 29 minutes.

Any questions?

Are you going into the development code?

So the request I received was to do a run-through of what changes Council incorporated into the development of when they adopted it on December 18th.

So I kept this relatively simple and high level and just kind of listed off those changes for all of you.

So Patrick, slide please.

Yes, please put it sideways.

So I just did this chapter by chapter, introductory provisions, the very first chapter of the zoning ordinance.

As you guys are all aware, one of the things we established with effective date will be February 19th, 60 days, I think 60 days plus one of the adoption date on December 18th.

And then also there's language in the introductory provisions that allowed us to do, I called it here, expanded vesting.

Basically, Virginia state law doesn't provide any vesting for submitted site plans.

If you've submitted a site plan and the rules change before you get that site plan approved and you have no other significant governmental action, then that site plan under state law has no

Utility.

It has to be consistent with whatever the change in zoning is.

We made the argument that we should allow for some form of what's called legislative vesting to go above and beyond the state requirements for site plans that have been submitted.

In short, the cutoff that was selected was August 31st.

So all site plans that were submitted

4 August 31st are vested and will continue forward under the existing zoning ordinance that was submitted after that.

Well, that's a good question.

So the resolution that accompanied the adoption of the zoning ordinance to establish essentially the rules for this investing say that you have to continue to make diligent efforts towards the approval of that site plan.

And then the whole thing has to be approved.

I think the cutoff date is end of June of 2025.

So you do have to get your site plan approved within a certain amount of time and continue to make progress towards approval of that site plan.

Once the site plan is approved, it is, you know, it's what you can build.

So not an exploration?

Oh, yeah.

Once you have a prototype plan approved, you have a certain amount of time to then build under.

Yes.

Yeah.

The state's been continuing to expand that deadline.

Sorry to interrupt.

So,

Well, actually, let me clarify that.

Remember, this is also applicable to building permits.

What does it do to their resubmission schedule?

Is their last submission the one after this one that expires?

We return it and say, oh, there's new ordinance now.

It doesn't comply with that.

And then we'll probably work it out on a case-by-case basis.

Because our ordinance doesn't actually, our existing ordinance and the proposed none of those actually recognize amendments.

Minor modifications would be to remain within the

Okay.

Do we know how many projects this is going to affect?

Six.

That is going to get a rezoning, which is a significant governmental issue.

So it'll be vested by virtue of that action.

Well, you will have to understand if it's vested under the old code.

So.

Maybe this doesn't matter because the actual submission deadline is February 28th, but it's not February 19th, right?

A specific date.

February 19th is established date in the code.

This is all new information, yes.

All right, slide please Patrick.

All right, changes to districts and uses.

You guys may recall that you guys had approved a limited degree of commercial uses within residential districts.

That idea did not make it through the process with city council.

City council introduced the notion of stepbacks with an entrance corridors.

In the NX3 district, they allowed for both indoor and outdoor recreation entertainment uses by SUP.

We expanded homestays to include the RX districts.

I think this is really just to remain consistent with our existing allowances for homestays.

And then we included a clarification that research laboratories are allowed as a general office use.

They do.

As opposed to a special permit, which was part of what was discussed at one point.

Story, right?

I believe it was.

And now I don't remember actually.

All right, slide please, Patrick.

And with the development standards, we had changes in the affordable dwelling unit chapter, which removed the distinction between ownership and rental units.

So without that distinction, 10% of units at 60% of AMI for 99 years in all the mixed-use districts, which are the bulk of our districts, and then bonus units in the residential districts are 80% of AMI for 30 years.

The other thing that happened was in the streetscape requirements, a new category of streetscape was identified basically for Route 29, the entrance corridor portion of Route 29,

So that's kind of what the streetscape is called for, right?

They're meant to match up.

And then in the administration section, the only change there was with we're out to BAR decisions, some additional clarity, if you will, or limits on BAR's discretion relative to regulating height, primarily also stepbacks.

I can share this presentation.

I will be actually at our last B.A.R.

meeting looked at a proposal for an apartment building that wraps around Mel's diner.

And it was interesting that the B.A.R.

was fully supportive of all seven stories of the proposal.

But I will note that the 25-foot thing, the step back, there is an existing historic building on the corner of 8th and West Main that that means that

and the BAR said, no, you should keep it and build behind it.

No, it doesn't, because you can just say you can't demolish it, right?

We're going to build on top of it and whatever.

Well, let's online.

I'd like to understand.

But this is interesting.

And I thought you guys would be interested to hear that we've already getting tested with our new

Patrick Seidl.

All right, zoning maps.

But there were several reductions in a lot of density in various parts of the city.

There were corresponding to that some additions to the RNA districts in Rose Hill.

King Lumber Yes, they included that whole area and they also went down Rose Hill to have a little bit.

So we have all those maps if anyone wants to look at those at any point in time.

So looking ahead, there's a pretty extensive list of things still to do.

I referred to this everything to do with the zoning ordinance as kind of learning, reviewing, and evolving the system.

Some of the things we know are already on our dance card in this regards are affordable dwelling units.

We're looking at an annual review of the manual.

I would not hesitate to include within that the notion of making changes to the ordinance itself as well.

Second item, we already have talked about coming back to the homestays.

I think one of the things we did not do in this drafting of the zoning ordinance was make any changes to our home-based business regulations, particularly with the notion of not including commercial uses within the residential.

We may want to look again at the home-based business ordinance and how that could be modified.

And then, as has been talked about at this table, a lot of considerations of further map amendments in the zoning.

And then I call these adjacent projects.

We've got a lot of these as well.

We talked about environmental regulations.

We need to look at how we treat stormwater.

There's a lot of interest in green building

Incentives or requirements, something in that realm.

There's a lot of interest in re-looking at critical slopes and different approaches towards that idea.

So there's a lot of work in this space.

We've got historic district design guidelines that need to be updated.

Right, Cole?

Yes.

Yep.

One of the ideas, we talked about this a little bit earlier this evening, the idea of pre-permitted building types, particularly around accessory dwelling units like backyard cottages and those types of things, but there's a whole wide range of places, areas that could go into.

And then broadly, I included in here this idea of education and support.

What I'm getting at is

I've really come to think about this new zoning ordinance, the new development code, as a new operating system for land use and development within the city.

Any time you adopt a new operating system, right, Rory?

That needs to come with education and support for all of your users.

Well, that's Rory, but I think he'll say something.

Spoken as a man who's obviously never put a winning spot together.

Well, if I'm putting it together, that's not who the education of sport needs to be targeted towards.

Education of sport needs to be targeted towards our users, the development community, the residents of the city, and also, frankly, to staff who have to turn this around and turn it and make sure it's a coherent permitting system going forward.

So this is, education support is going to be an ongoing and important aspect of this.

And I include in that is the notions we were talking about earlier at the table about how do we make it, one of the things this zoning ordinance does, what the complement plan set us up for, what the zoning ordinance does, is theoretically make it easier for small scale developers to be able to operate in the city and bring in infill development projects.

But that also requires us to think about how we can, we can provide additional support to small scale developers, because frankly, the whole system of development really broadly

here and really all over the place is set up to steer you towards large projects with development teams that have lots of money to do that.

And we're looking at a different system.

And so what are the tools we can put into place to support that small scale developer to be able to do infill projects here?

So that's it.

I have a question on the ownership rental thing.

So what are they doing with the ownership?

How does that work?

How do you mean?

If someone buys a town home

Yeah, are you selling a town home that's for somebody who's at 60% AMI?

I'm assuming like you're affordable town home.

Yeah, what is that person?

What are they obligated to?

That's absolutely the notion.

How does it it's it's it's creating

a permanent supply of affordable ownership units.

Identifiable, stigmatizable, point-to-able, not appreciating and valued buildings.

So if you're at 60% AMI, you're not allowed to benefit from the general market.

There's clearly some disagreement around this issue.

The problems with that are there are

I won't.

So on a slightly different subject, on the subject of evolving, can we talk very briefly about this thing that Riverbend is doing in their sort of site plan that wasn't vested, that got submitted to BAR for the CFA lot?

So it looks like what they're doing, you guys might need to get a little closer here,

You were there.

They subdivided off this parcel, which is like a tiny strip of land along Lexington.

And it seems like they're doing it in order to get around the setback requirements, the ability requirements.

I don't recall off the top of my head if it's a buildable lot.

This is the old ordinance, which does require buildable lots.

There's no approval of that item.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's that's what it was.

They wanted to have a deeper

As far as the BAR is concerned, what they were proposing makes more sense than building out to the street.

So that was an interesting conversation.

Yeah, I do remember that.

I remember calling them out on it and they had a very convincing argument that it would work.

There are also access issues with the proposal that are provided.

Yep.

And I mean, now it's, they didn't, they were after the testing deadline, right?

So they've got a resubmitter that they want unless they get

in the next two weeks, three weeks.

We'll take a look at it.

There seems to be so many other ways of dealing with the issue that actually subdividing a narrow strip seems like kind of an obtuse way to deal with the issue.

I mean, in the code, there's so many different ways of dealing with the issue.

So this might be reflected, well, I mean, this is the old code, but under the new code, we don't understand how to do it in the new code yet.

So yeah, which comes back to that notion of educations.

Well, I'm just doing it.

I'm sitting in the new code.

So a brief word about the new ordinance is not perfect.

We didn't expect it to be perfect, but it is good and far better than what we had.

And it is a living, breathing document that we can fix as we move along.

And I like the fact that we had five counselors on the page of it.

So at the end of the day, I am pleased with the current iteration of the document.

And again, it is an iteration.

I got.

I would certainly like to sign on to your optimism in that.

Actually, I was delighted to discover the last hour that apparently January 23rd is National Measure Your Feet Day.

So I've got something to do when we go home.

Let's adjourn.

We are adjourned.

Thank you, guys.